Forbidden
by Disciple Of The Dragon Star
Summary: Dreams are revealing in more ways than one. After all you can't hide from yourself. As Ichigo discovers, sometimes running away from a fact won't change it. IchiRuki depending on how you interpret it. Poetry fic. Oneshot.


**Forbidden / Just A Dream**

**Sometimes you just come across people in certain books or shows that speak with voices that are so unique and dynamic that they haunt you. For me, Ichigo and Rukia do that. They are in tandem, in harmony. I don't go for them because they are a cute couple but because they are a powerul couple who speak not in lovey dovey shit but in actions. They aren't romantic. They are dynamic. So I like 'em. And this fic idea has been haunting me for months. So here we go...my first IchiRuki fanfic, depending on whether you'd like to view it as friendship or love - I dunno. Could be both.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach but Kubo pwns the rest of us with it.**

He knew it was a dream.

Even when the snow falling trailed cold fingers down the back of his neck and soaked them into his clothes he knew it was a dream.

Why else would the woman he had long since let go of appear before him as suddenly as she had gone?

Just a dream. A vivid, white landscape of endless white dunes of snow. Ice in intricate patterns that melted silently into the white ground. A few trees - a frozen lake -

And her. Standing in the blindingly white yukata, oblivious to the cold, bare feet pressing into the snow.

_**And seeing you is like**_

**_Tasting the fruit of a forbidden life_**

**_Now left behind._**

She opens those blue eyes he knows well, amethyst and indigo melded into a strong fierce almost hawlike gaze. She is small, he towers over her, but she radiates pure willpower and strength. She is not vulnerable, this small, slight figure in the cold frozen expanse. She is capable.

_**You seem unchanged, eternal -**_

_**Like undisturbed ice falling**_

_**From the monochrome sky.**_

She smiles. Confident. Able. Her eyes light up as though fires are burning in those depthless pools.

_**Smile then**_

_**Arrogant. I know that look so well**_

**_Like flame burning in a façade of ice._**

"Pathetic," she says lightly. He flinches. Her voice is loud. It echoes in the wide landscape, reflects off the packed ice. "You are such a stupid fool. Is this the man I thought was a hero? What is with that stupid face?"

He wants to say it. He wants to say how much he has lost with the final remnants of his powers that faded, with the dissolving of the last atoms of her existence. But against that smile, against that fire in her eyes he is speechless.

She laughs then. As if she knows. She probably does, he thinks hazily. Probably. It is one of the things she knows well - how to read him.

_**Run run run**_

_**Across this endless field of ice and snow**_

_**Flashing limbs and flying hair**_

_**And your laugh shattering into crystal**_

_**in the cold air.**_

She glides across the snow like a nymph born to fly. He is panting and struggling to keep up. No matter how fast he pumps his legs she is one step ahead - then two, then three. She peeks back over her shoulder, face screwed up in a malicious grin. Taunting him. He would smile. He wants to smile. But the muscles in his face refuse to work.

"Stop!" he cries but the sound never leaves his throat. Silence escapes instead and hangs in the still air.

_**Out of reach and now**_

_**You've stopped and turn back**_

_**Tease and then forbid a touch**_

_**Like water through my fingers -**_

She looks serious now, paused in the middle of the frozen over lake. He is panting, harsh white mist escaping to hover in front of his mouth.

She is so close...if he could just...reach...

What does he hope to accomplish? That touching her will make her real? Or that it will somehow bring back that will she always seemed to inspire in him?

The violet blue eyes search him smoulderingly. They linger on the agonizingly slow movement of his hand as he reaches out just to touch the chilly white of her robe -

"It's no use," she states emotionlessly. "It won't come back. Nothing will."

He pauses and stays silent but he screams at her in his head to give it back, something, anything, EVERYTHING!

"I am sorry," she says, and he stiffens in shock. "Sorry that I burdened you with the gift of a power that you shouldn't have known so young. I'm sorry for dragging you into a war that was never your own. I'm sorry for giving you the strength to protect your friends...and thus forcing you into a position where to save them you had to have those powers ripped from you..."

**_And when you've stripped me bare_**

**_And laid my mind open to the blizzard_**

**_Look into the core of my heart_**

**_And see the missing piece there_**.

"How will I ever take it back?" Her eyes are sorrowful. "How can I ever make you...whole again?"

He cannot answer because she is right. He was forced to give up a world.

He feels a strange pain. Like a deep ache in his chest. It is familiar to him by now but seeing her has brought it to a new dimension. It is hopelessness. Sadness. How can he tell her that he had lost his place? That he is now anonymous? That only she can bring back what he lost?

She is now fading, just like on that fateful day. Glimmering fragments of her body are slowly floating away with the cold breeze that has swept in. She looks at them, then at him and the aged sorrow in her eyes shocks him. He suddenly realises how much older she is than him and how many years that she has seen and savoured. How much pain must she have also been in...? And his hand finally moves, he lunges forward only to find that his palm grasps empty air. Only her eyes remain, sad and pained, a silent apology reflected twice."

Goodbye...Ichigo."

_**So you're going again**_

_**But now you speak my name**_

_**And bring it to life in the echoing emptiness.**_

_**You resurrect it from nowhere**_

_**And bring it to life.**_

_**Stops me being eclipsed by**_

_**The dark rain that falls when you go away.**_

And as the last of her fades away, as all the emotion he has pent up bursts loose...

Kurosaki Ichigo wakes up in bed. The full moon is shining through the window and right into his eyes. It is a silent night, a night where secrets are let free into it's dark realms which hold many a mystery.

And it is into the night, into the dark silent night and the ears of whatever uncaring God listens that Kurosaki Ichigo releases the name that holds untold sorrow for him, the name that both cheers and saddens.

"Goodbye Rukia."

**So? Reviews please? Comments? Criticism? Improvements? Surely you guys have some right? Please review. Thank you. No flames please.**


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